And remember, the key criterion used by most savvy investors in selecting funds is the jockey -- the fund's manager -- and his or her tenure and track record.

Be prepared. Optimists are forecasting a renewed bull market, with the Dow crossing 10,000 before 2000.Here are seven best-of-the-best funds: SuperStar growth funds that have been in negative territory this year and are already solidly recovering from their lows.Excellent buys, winners you want for a long-term portfolio.They'll be around when you retire. Buy.

Neuberger & Berman Partners (NPRTX) Investors can get a very warm, safe, sleep-peacefully feeling from the Neuberger & Berman family of no-load funds, like you're at a family gathering protected by several uncles the size of NFL linemen. N&B Partners is a large value fund that's been around since 1968. Returns are about 16 percent the last 5 years. Partners co-manager Robert Gendelman says the fund's focus is on undervalued stocks selling at discounts: "We think of ourselves as buying pieces of a business, to borrow a phrase from Warren Buffett, and we'd be willing to buy the entire company at the price that we're buying it in the marketplace."

Nicholas Fund (NICSX) Do all-America basketball players make winning fund managers? Well, here's one who has. Since founding the fund back in 1969, Albert Nicholas, a cage star at the University of Wisconsin in the early '50s, has put together an outstanding long-term track record, averaging a gain of better than 15 percent for the past 15 years. Son David joined him as manager of two funds in 1993 and has been co-managing the Nicholas Fund since 1996, with essentially no change in style. In fact, in the past three years, the team has had some of its best years, with average returns of about 20 percent. Assets have expanded to $5 billion. Albert Nicholas may have played hot on the hardwood, but his investment style is quite the opposite. A staunch value manager, he picks right at the tip-off. Then he hangs on for a long time, as his 17 percent turnover proves. In addition to the tax efficiency here, returns are enhanced by low expenses of under 0.75 percent.

Papp America Abroad (PAAFX) The world economy is undergoing a massive paradigm shift. In 1970, 67 percent of the global stock market capitalization was in the good old U.S.A. By 1997, that had dropped to 44 percent. Paralleling this shift, many solid American blue-chip companies, like Exxon (XON)
XON, -3.24%
, Coca-Cola (KO)
KO, -0.74%
and Gillette (G)
G, -0.59%
, now generate more than 70 percent of their earnings from foreign operations. And keep in mind that some major U.S. companies, like General Electric (GE)
GE, -1.39%
, with a market cap of over $250 billion and with substantial overseas operations, are bigger than the economies of many countries. So here's manager Roy Papp's asset allocation "tip": Forget about investing in international funds that put your money in little-known foreign companies and high-risk countries. You can fulfill your goal with a fund like Papp America Abroad, which invests only in U.S. blue chips. Papp "invented" this strategy, and, with a five-year average annual return of over 20 percent, he looks like a genius, a patriot and a top-gun manager. Solid numbers.

Sound Shore (SSHFX) They should rename this fund "Safe Shore." You feel like your money is well-protected if it's anchored to this ship. Here's a 12-year-old midcap value fund with $1.6 billion in assets and an average annual return of 22 percent in the past three years and almost 16 percent annual returns for the past decade, a winning fund that been tracking the S&P 500 rather closely. Sound Shore is guided by a disciplined investment philosophy. Very little can knock it off course. According to co-manager Gibbs Kane: "To the degree that we look at stocks that are unpopular, we're looking at the market at a discount. We're only in stocks where the P/E is about 75 percent of the S&P on consensus earnings for four quarters." And that has been the case almost all of the last 12 years, the life of the Sound Shore fund.

T. Rowe Price Mid-Cap Growth (RPMGX) All T. Rowe Price funds live by a staunch buy 'n' hold philosophy: "It's not timing the market, it's time in the market," said the founder. And here's yet another winner from the T. Rowe Price family of funds.Mid-Cap was started in 1992 on the leading edge a company "renaissance," as SmartMoney called it. Manager Brian Berghuis was one of the first managers of Mid-Cap and has been on board since the fund came out of the gate in 1992. He's created a solid performer with over $2.5 billion in assets invested 65 percent in midcaps with high growth potential. A conservative strategist, Berghuis takes it as a compliment if you call his portfolio "boring." No aggressive moves.No hot stocks.No big-time momentum plays.Just solid, long-term capital appreciation. Find companies whose valuations are down, bet on the recovery with projected earnings growth of 15 percent or better within three to five years and stay away from high price/earnings ratios.

Torray Fund (TORYX) Robert E. Torray is another classic value investor, with total confidence in himself. When asked what percentage of an investor's portfolio ought to be allocated to the Torray Fund, without hesitation he replied, "I think it ought to be 100 percent."Not a bad idea. His average returns were over 22 percent the past three years, with turnover less than 15 percent. As Torray put it, "We only look for two or three investments a year. And if we find five, we'll buy five. Our approach is substantially reactive. We just wait until we observe in a company or an industry falling share prices, and that triggers a research effort. I've been in the business 35 years. I'm generally familiar with how various industries and businesses operate, how they interrelate to each other. So it's not a major thing for me and our company to see a falling share price and be able to assess a situation pretty rapidly. We're in a position to invest in some businesses if we studied them for a day. Others, like AT&T (T)
T, -1.65%
, we studied and thought about for three years, during which time the stock went sideways and down." With that kind of discipline, it's easy to understand why Torray's a winning jockey.

White Oak Growth Stock (WOGSX) Here's a genuine breath of fresh air: a stock fund that isn't slowly morphing into an index fund. It's run by veteran money manager Jim Oelschlager. He started the White Oak fund in 1992 after years of honing his skills managing billions for large institutions. Oelschlager's contrarian strategy narrowly targets just three high-growth sectors, which he selects based on macroeconomic trends. Currently, they're the financial, technology and health-care sectors. Like Warren Buffett, he focuses on a few great stocks in building a concentrated portfolio of just 25 stocks. Names like Cisco (CSCO)
CSCO, -4.02%
, Compaq (CPQ)
CPQ
, Sun (SUNW)
SUNW, -0.60%
, Oracle (ORCL)
ORCL, -1.42%
and Microsoft (MSFT)
MSFT, -1.70%
predominate. Oelschlager hit his stride in 1995 with an incredible 52 percent total return, 15 points better than the S&P 500 that year. And, despite of the recent market drop, his three-year return is still in the vicinity of 21 percent.Like Frank Sinatra, Oelschlager's doing it his way, a common trait among winning jockeys.

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